Co-operative Party

The Wales Co-operative Party will have a fringe meeting at Welsh Labour conference next week and as a member of the party I look forward to speaking at it.

I spoke at a very well-attended Co-op party meeting in Llanelli on Friday, where I made it clear that the Assembly coalition arrangements would not stop us taking the fight to Plaid Cymru in its heartlands in the upcoming local elections.

In Rhondda Cynon Taff we will be fighting hard to expose the opportunism of the nationalists locally. I know colleagues in Carmarthenshire will be doing the same. The Welsh Assembly Government is a coalition, not a merger, and that won’t stop us fighting tooth and nail for every council seat.

There are no ‘no-go’ areas for Labour in Wales. Labour can only win a majority in the 2011 Assembly elections if we strengthen our base in West and North Wales. Our appeal needs to go beyond our heartlands.

We need to engage better with Welsh-speakers who want to see social justice. We must also reach out to aspirant voters, including those whose lives have been made more comfortable by Labour economic success over the last ten years, and show how Labour can improve their opportunities.

The local elections will remind people that Labour is a campaigning party, able and ready to campaign within and across communities. Welsh Labour’s community campaigning builds on our history and tradition of community socialism, campaigning with and alongside people from the communities we represent.

Plaid’s strategy may be to try to divide Labour in Wales from Labour in London, but we must not allow that to happen. We must acknowledge the successes of our UK and Assembly governments as well as Labour in local government, not engage in a blame culture. We are proud to be Welsh, proud to be British, proud to be Labour.

Oddly, this speech seems to have upset Wales's most self-righteous MP. Perhaps because it's made a local paper. Apparently if he attacks Labour as he does every week, that's contributing to a political debate. If we attack Plaid on the other hand, that is sectarianism. Bizarre.